The Alberta Provincial Nominee Program (PNP) is an employer-driven immigration program operated by the Government of Alberta, in conjunction with Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC).
Employers unable to fill skilled positions with Canadian residents may present their business case to the Alberta Provincial Nominee Program and apply for approval to recruit a specified number of foreign candidates to fill these positions.

To alleviate the severe labour shortages being experienced by Alberta companies, the PNP team embarked on a LEAN journey in the fall of 2005 to look at ways of increasing the throughput of their process.

Within 6 months they achieved these remarkable successes:

• 40.8% increase in Employer applications
• 107.0 % increase in processed Provincial Nominees/ Applications
• 19% reduction in the time required to process the "Employer File"
• 17.6% reduction in the time required to process the "Nominee File"

This LEAN process was facilitated by Cliff Skrypnyk, Alberta Employment, Immigration & Industry's Director of Manufacturing Systems. Some of the techniques that were utilized to improve the process included:

• Improving the efficiency of the distribution process (electronic documentation workflow procedures)
• Streamlining the approval process
• Developing a work cell approach

Joyce Conroy, Manager Operations

Joyce Conroy combines her background as a small businesswoman and experience with the provincial government as the Manager of Operations with the Alberta Provincial Nominee Program. She joined the program shortly after it was initiated in 2001, beginning working for the department of Alberta Economic Development in 1991.

During her tenure with the Provincial government, she has been responsible for trade development in the Asia Pacific region, particularly Japan. She served as a board member and President of the Canada Japan Business Association of Edmonton from 1997 to 2001.

Following that, she assumed the responsibility for providing training and assistance to small to medium sized companies that were beginning to export, particularly to the United States, as the Manager for New Exporter Initiatives with the Regional and Industry Development Branches.

Previous to joining the Department of Economic Development, she was a small business owner and operator in Fort McMurray and Edmonton.